Love First Aid Kit. No, I wouldn’t have guessed that they are Swedish, but since I knew I didn’t have to. What I can’t get over is that they are only 19 and 21. And sisters. They are currently at No 1 in the Swedish charts.

That said, the area where that sort of American country music developed largely corresponds with the areas of greatest Swedish settlement in USA in late the 19th / early 20th centuries (Minnesota, Nebraska, the Dakotas...), so maybe that singing style was partly Swedish in the first place. (?)

My experience of Swedes through dealing with them regularly at work is that they speak exceptionally good English, but i have never noticed an American accent as such. I believe though that this First Aid Kit album was recorded in the US - and this is more likely to have been an influence. Sort of like the way early Kiwi hip-hop artists used to mimic US artists before they found their mojo.

Ok, so I haven't got a link to a video or picture or anything, but I will ask you to use your imagining to conjure up an ordinary, but somehow special thing today...In the Cashel Street container mall, in a courtyard area off to one side, sunny and warm because it was out of the biting north-easterly. Billy Vallance and Jon Hooker brewing up a quietly good set while me and beloved had a quick flat white under the tree from the caravan and others chomped through lunch souvlaki and sushi. So good just to be; in that place at that time. A snapshot hour I will carry with me.

It's kind of odd to me how virtually every good vocalist sings with an American accent. Is it an especially musical accent? Perhaps it's because singers are expected to be capable of high volume, and the American accent is especially appropriate for that? It's quite high pitched and clear. Words like "I" and "my" become "Ah", and "mah".

I think it's how we learn to sing. We hear American accents (which have long been prominent in popular music) and, consciously or otherwise, copy them. It's no longer "American", necessarily; simply part of the genre. I remember a series about popular music on TV years ago, in which one interviewee traced a lot of it back to the Appalachian influence in Country music which, itself, had a strong influence on early Rock and Roll.

I can remember singing teachers (and others) of the 60s and 70s being really disparaging about American accents. (Actually, I remember some people being pretty negative about the Kiwi accent(s) in singing. The word "the", for example, pronounced in a NZ accent, was anathema to one choir conductor. I think that was partly because of what it tended to do to the length of the sung note.)

A similar thing used to happen in theatre with English accents.

One of the best ways to learn is by imitation. In the early stages, we don't know which parts of what we're imitating are going to be most important to us. As we become more confident and experienced, we find our own "voice" (see "mojo" above).

If market forces are important to us, then we might tend to stay with an "American" pronunciation. It does seem to be easy to sell to the "world market" by comparison to other accents.

It does seem to be easy to sell to the "world market" by comparison to other accents.

Mind you, Hip hop, whilst predominantly American in origin, has accents all of its own and seems to have little trouble selling. Similarly with one really obvious non-American one, the Jamaican. But when they go melodic, then it blends back. So again, I can't help but think there is something strangely apt to that kind of singing in that accent.